Herman Lehmann

Herman Lehmann (June 5, 1859 - February 2, 1932) was captured as a child by Native Americans. He lived first among the Apache and then the Comanche but eventually returned to his family later on in his life. The phenomenon of a "white boy" raised by "Indians" made him a notable figure in the United States. He published his autobiography, Nine Years Among the Indians in 1927.

Biography

Capture

Lehmann was born near Fredericksburg, Texas, on June 5, 1859, to German immigrants Moritz and Auguste Lehmann. The family later settled on an isolated farm four miles southwest of Loyal Valley, Texas. On May 16, 1870, a raiding party of eight to ten Apaches (probably Lipans) captured Herman, who was almost eleven, and his eight-year-old brother, Willie. Their two sisters escaped without injury. Four days later, the Apache raiding party encountered a patrol of ten African-American cavalrymen led by Sgt. Emanuel Stance, who had been sent from Fort McKavett to recover the two Lehmann boys. In the short battle that followed, Willie Lehmann was able to escape, but the Apaches fled with Herman. Sergeant Stance became the first black regular to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on this mission.

Life with the Apaches

The Apaches took Herman Lehmann to their village in eastern New Mexico. He was adopted by a man named Carnoviste and his wife, Laughing Eyes. The Apaches called Herman “Enda” (White Boy). He spent about six years with them and became assimilated into their culture, rising to the position of petty chief. As a young warrior, one of his most memorable battles was a running fight with the Texas Rangers on August 24, 1875, which took place on the Concho Plains about 65 miles west of the site of San Angelo, Texas. Ranger James Gillett nearly shot Herman before he realized he was a white "captive.". When the Rangers tried to find Herman later, he escaped by crawling through the grass.

Asylum with the Comanches

Around the spring of 1876, Herman Lehmann killed an Apache shaman during an argument. Fearing revenge, he fled from the Apaches. Since he considered himself an Indian, he did not want to return to his German-American family. Instead, he joined a group of renegade Comanches who had left their reservation. The Comanches gave him a new name, Montechema (meaning unknown). In the spring of 1877, Herman and the Comanches attacked buffalo hunters on the high plains of Texas. Herman was wounded by hunters in a surprise attack on the Indian camp at Yellow House Canyon (present-day Lubbock, Texas) on March 18, 1877, the last major fight between Indians and non-Indians in Texas.

In July 1877, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, who had successfully negotiated the surrender of the last fighting Comanches in 1875, was sent in search of the renegades. Herman Lehmann was among the group that Quanah found camped on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Quanah persuaded them to quit fighting and come to the Indian reservation near Fort Sill, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Return and adjustment

Herman Lehmann lived with Quanah Parker’s family on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in 1877-78. Several people took notice of the white boy living among the Indians. In April 1878, Lt. Col. John W. Davidson, the commanding officer of Fort Sill, ordered that Herman be sent under guard to his family in Texas. Herman arrived in Loyal Valley with an escort of soldiers on May 12, 1878, eight years after his capture. At first, he was sullen and wanted nothing to do with his mother and siblings. As he put it, "I was an Indian, and I did not like them because they were palefaces." His readjustment to his original culture was slow and painful. His first marriage failed, and he later admitted that he hated manual labor, drank too much, and got into brawls.

Herman Lehmann’s first memoir, written with the assistance of Jonathan H. Jones, was published in 1899 under the titleA Condensed History of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes for Amusement and General Knowledge (also known as Indianology). Herman left Texas and moved back to Indian Territory in 1900 to be close to his Apache and Comanche friends. In 1908, after eight years of legal wrangling, the federal government granted him an allotment of land as an adopted Comanche through a special act of Congress.

Throughout his life, Herman Lehmann drifted between two very different cultures. He returned to Texas in 1926 and spent the remainder of his life in Loyal Valley with the family of his brother Willie. Herman was a very popular figure in southwestern Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, appearing at county fairs and rodeos. To thrill audiences, he would chase a calf around an arena, kill it with arrows, jump off his horse, cut out the calf’s liver, and eat it raw. His second autobiography, Nine Years Among the Indians (1927, edited by J. Marvin Hunter), is one of the finest captivity narratives in American literature.

Herman Lehmann’s story also inspired Fred Gipson’s novel Savage Sam, a sequel to Old Yeller.

Herman Lehmann died on February 2, 1932, in Loyal Valley, Texas, where he is buried.

References

• Greene, A. C. (1972) The Last Captive. Austin: The Encinco Press.
• Lehmann, Herman. (1927) Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879. J. Marvin Hunter; reprint, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
• Zesch, Scott. (2004) The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier. New York: St. Martin's Press.